[LETTER : work, and keep wages down. These…]

Scan page 9

LETTER : work, and keep wages down.

These schemes have a particular appeal to the bureaucracy because, while their objective is to stifle the independence of the workers' movement, they can be presented as if they were some real reform, to distract attention ,. from the bureaucrat's policeman's uniform.

The TUC General Council is committed to demanding that workers' "representatives" make up a half of the Boards of Directors of all large firms.

This is what they and "lefts" like Benn call "industrial democracy" and 'a step towards workers' control"

In fact, it is a more sophisticated cover for their daily collaboration with the capitalist class.

CAPITALIST ADVOCATES The capitalists of the CBI have also for some years been enthusiastic advocates of such forms of "workers' participation"

Three of their leaders (from ICI, GKN, and Williams nad Glyn's Bank) have spent the last few months with Jack Jones, Clive Jenkins and a few "neutral" academics on a committee chaired and dominated by Alan Bullock, ex-Vice Chancellor of that haven of workers' democracy, Oxford University.

This committee is about to produce two reports. The majority report (by the TUC representatives and the academics) recommends that there should be equal numbers of shareholders' and "trade union representatives" on the Boards of Directors of all large firms plus a third group appointed by both sides (the so-called "2x plus y" formula).

The minority report, by the three explicit capitalist representatives, accepts the principle of FOLROSE Tacc such participation but wants it to be more restricted in operation.

They want fewer workers' representatives who need not be trade union members; and they don't want it to apply to all firms, only to those where the trade unions are already strong.

This last fact alone must make clear to any class conscious worker what the scheme involves - it is a long term employers' strategy for the destruction of the independent strength of the unions.

Of course nothing could suit the TUC better than this much publicised dispute on the Bullock Committee.

ILLUSION

They are trying to use it to give in even stronger illusion that particpation is a reform in the interests if the working class for which they nust fight against capitalist hostilty.

The fact is, however, that the lisagreements are merely of detail. In matters of principle there is no oom for a razor blade between the positions of the CBI and the TUC General Council.

The real purpose of participation - to hold back and divert the independent struggles of the working class is shown very clearly by experience in British Leyland under the NEB-financed Ryder And even during the first year of participation - nominally a "trial' period - attacks upon the stewards' movement and the whole workforce have been mounting steadily.

Demanning and voluntary redundancies have reduced the workforce and added considerably to unemployment; contracts are being withdrawn from outside firms -like Export Packing Services near Banbury and stewards who oppose participation and fight in defence of their members have been blatantly victimised.

A key role in the introduction of this "experiment in industrial democracy has been played by 'left' talkers like Communist Party member Derek Robinson, a member of the supreme "participation" body the Cars Council.

When a motion opposing the introduction of participation was brought to the BMC Combine Shop Stewards Committee - which until Ryder had for 30 years been the main arena for the discussion of issues confronting the workers in the combine - Robinson used his position as chairman to rule the motion 'out of order' ALREADY DECIDED The reason for this was that the matter had 'already been decided'. Indeed it had! Shortly before the Combine Committee meeting, the Company had convened a meeting Dear Comrades, I have just read Paul Stein's review of Livio Maitan's Party, Army and Masses in China and welcome it as a model of comradely debate.

The review raises a valuable criticism of the book, which is that it gives insufficient emphasis to "the origins of the modern, bureaucratised Chinese state in the areas controlled by the Party and Army before 1949"

The points Comrade Stein makes about the "social bureaucracy" are to my mind essentially correct, and although, they do not go entirely unmentioned in the later chapers of Livio's book, they are perhaps not given due weight.

An equally important factor in the bureaucratisation of the